1998-07-02 04:00:00 PDT Wimbledon, England -- SHE WANDERS about the Wimbledon grounds as a transported soul, longing for some other time, very grunge-fashionable with her leather coats, offbeat jewelry and sunglasses. Natasha Zvereva is cool, above all. She likes the feel of a Harley-Davidson beneath her and a brisk wind in her face.

It's probably Martina Navratilova's fault that Zvereva's full story has been pushed aside. It became a lesser work against Navratilova's epic, because Martina had it all: The courage, the honesty and the championships. But now we find Zvereva on the verge of the Wimbledon finals.

Only a French woman named Nathalie Tauziat stands in her way after Zvereva's stunning 7-6 (7-4), 6-2 upset of Monica Seles on Court 1 yesterday. Perhaps now, at the peak of her career, people will clear some dust off the library and recall what this remarkable Belarussian woman accomplished so long ago.

She was just 17 years old in 1989, known by her given name of Natalia, with a gorgeous backhand and a typically stifled Soviet lifestyle. She would immerse herself in literature between tournaments, delving deeply into Chekhov and Tolstoy, imagining herself a modern-day Anna Karenina.

She favored music from the past -- Hendrix, early Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple -- and spoke astonishingly perfect English. Americans were fascinated by the images of this brooding, mysterious teenager, having little idea what was taking place behind the scenes of Russian tennis.

Basically, they were stealing her blind. Although the Soviet tennis federation funded her equipment and travel expenses -- she had been a professional since the age of 14 -- the program took every cent of her professional paychecks. As the 1989 Family

Circle Cup tournament approached in Hilton Head, S.C., Zvereva estimated that some $500,000 of her winnings had been pocketed by the federation.

That is when she unleashed her bombshell. She was talking to Bud Collins on national television after losing the final to Steffi Graf, and when officials handed over her check, she said, "This $24,000, it's not money, just a piece of paper."

Collins, for perhaps the first time in his life, was speechless. Zvereva was essentially telling Soviet officials that she was fed up, that she would fight the system and do everything possible to keep her hard-earned money.

It was a long, difficult struggle. Natalia had a formidable ally in her father, Marat, a rebellious youth from the Stalin era. During World War II -- in which he lost his own father in battle -- young Marat would disappear from military school for months at a time, finally getting expelled at the age of 15. He had been kicked out of a college in Kiev, as well, before marrying a former volleyball player and settling in Minsk as a tennis instructor.

With her father's full support, and Soviet officials throwing up their hands in outrage, Natalia boldly signed a lucrative deal with ProServ, the heavyweight sports management company. The federation realized it could only control young Natalia if it could keep her at home, and there was no chance of that. She moved to the United States, wore the clothing of a flower-child hippie ("I wish I'd been here in the '60s"), embraced the capitalist lifestyle -- and eventually won the fight.

"Natalia is a pioneer in our country, for the tennis players and for the other athletes," says the former Soviet great Olga Morozova. "She was the first one who did it. After Natalia, our athletes no longer had to send their winnings home."

The victory seemed quite enough for Natasha, a name she fancied and took for her own. Navratilova became tennis' ultimate pioneer, defecting from Czechoslovakia, breaking down the barriers of homophobia, winning every big title in sight, but Natasha just wanted to live. She had an occasional breakthrough in singles, but doubles and partying were her greatest passions. Partnering mostly with Gigi Fernandez, she racked up five Wimbledon doubles titles and 20 Grand Slam championships overall.

There is a measure of genius in her game, a surgeon's touch and a fine mixture of pace. Before this Wimbledon even started, Seles said, "Natasha has the best hands in the game." Fellow players were shocked when she knocked off Steffi Graf in the third round, but only because she had kept up her concentration for an entire match. There was never a question about the talent.

Yesterday, in the sun and refreshing breezes of a Wimbledon afternoon, Natasha dominated Seles. She seemed pleasantly frozen at the baseline, a vision of confidence in wraparound shades, dictating the entire match from that position as Seles scrambled wildly about. Lobs, drop shots, slices, topspin -- it was all there, all perfectly disguised. "My performance really bugs me," said Seles. "I got all uptight with myself and was just all over the place. But Natasha rose to the occasion. I did not. She played really smart tennis."

Zvereva, addressing the media in her accent-free English, said she had surprised herself -- "big-time. I am absolutely thrilled. This is completely unexpected." Now it's the semifinals, when the world really starts to pay attention. Perhaps some will remember what happened in the dark ages of Russian tennis, when a bright young teenager knocked down the establishment.